Marlon Wayans quit cigars for 20 years. Vanity will do that.
“I was young, and I was just like, ‘I don’t want my teeth yellow.’ At that point, Michael Jordan was smoking so many sticks that he started looking like the Jordan meme. His eyes got all red, and I was just like, ‘wait, I need to be a movie star.’”
Wayans, 53 years old, was “an old man in the 90s, because I was golfing, smoking cigars, doing exactly what I’m doing now but I was way ahead of my time. So I put down the cigars.”
“It was lonely. Then I had a cigar and it was peaceful, and I just said to myself, ‘I’m in, 150%.’”
So “in” that he began studying the leaf, which turned into the seeds of his own cigar brand, Liga Tridente, which launched last year.
“It took me some time to really learn the wrapper, the binder, the leaves and the differences,” Wayans says. “I smoked so many cigars and it took me some time to learn. If I’m going to do it, I am going to research.”
Wayans, the youngest of ten kids from New York City, has a career filled with hit movies and sitcom stardom. He started with appearances in older brother Keenan’s sketch comedy show “In Living Color,” followed by a co-star role in the 90s sitcom “The Wayans Bros.” alongside brother Shawn. The 2004 comedy “White Chicks” remains a cult favorite.
He’s in the middle of “The Wild Child Tour,” a series of U.S. dates that includes some three-show-a-day engagements and runs from large theaters to cozy comedy clubs. And on an April morning, Wayans is shuttling his daughter to school as he talks to Cigar Snob.
After a recent gig in Detroit at the MGM Grand, Wayans stopped into a local cigar lounge, Did it My Way, one of the city’s newest lounges that opened last year.
“I find the best [lounge] closest to my hotel and kick back and have me a cigar,” Wayans says. “And if the owner or the buyer or the guy who puts the humidor together is there, I sit with them and we have one.”
Liga Tridente announced at the PCA trade show in April the addition of a Churchill, featuring a rosado oscuro wrapper, and a Robusto, with a Connecticut-seed wrapper.
Wayans hopes he can learn the product as well as he knows the punchline.
CS: You’ve built a career on puncturing pomposity. Cigars often have a formality to them in some circles. How do you feel about that?
Wayans: Cigars are for everybody. It’s a form of meditation. It’s a time that you think to yourself, but with cigars, it’s a longer period of time. You don’t inhale. You retrohale, you get it out of your system. You taste the notes, it’s like sipping wine. So it becomes a whole other experience. I like to sit down with good people and have great conversations with great sticks. The whole culture of cigar smokers, I like the people. They’re calm. They’re intelligent. [We have] meaningful conversations. For me, it’s better than the club. I’m not about the clubs and my socializing has to have some meaning. As you get older, your time becomes more important to you. It’s the most valuable thing you have.
I was smoking yesterday with my good friend, Anthony Anderson, and comedian Alex Thomas. It’s funny because when I was smoking cigars back in the day, they would look at me like I was crazy. Then when I was golfing, they used to look at me like I was crazy. Then I quit both, and when I came back, who was smoking cigars and golfing? Anthony Anderson and Alex Thomas. Now they’re really good at golfing, and I’m good at cigars. It was just nice to have that little, you know, that little time hanging out together with my friends. But I can also sit on my porch alone and smoke.
CS: What do you think about when you’re smoking alone on your porch?
Wayans: I think about my day. I think about, you know, my life. I think about God. I think about my purpose. I think about my plans for not just a day, but for the year and for my life. What am I doing to impact the world and influence my next generations? And, you know, for me, it’s, it’s my alone time. I really love smoking alone. It’s important that you have your me time.
CS: Who would you like to smoke a cigar with that you haven’t yet?
Wayans: President Obama for one. I know he smokes cigarettes, but I want to introduce him to cigars. He would be a great representative for cigar brands. It would be a hit, man. Also Arnold, I want to smoke a cigar with Schwarzenegger.
CS: You have a lot of demands, including a new Scary Movie, the sixth one. You’ve said about this movie, “we’re going to cancel ‘cancel culture.’” What do you mean by that?
Wayans: I want to cancel that feeling of you’re going to get in trouble for being funny. Or that feeling that people are too sensitive to laugh. I want to remove that feeling from our mind, our thoughts, our spirit. Because I think we’re in a very depressed place, and we don’t even acknowledge it. I think social media has influenced the world to be overly sensitive and overly opinionated. And they forgot how to enjoy and laugh. We’re always going to be different but laughter brings us together. We can be on two opposite sides of the fence. Democrat, Republican, but I crack the right joke, and a Democrat and a Republican laugh. For that moment, we all came together, and we agreed that that was funny. Same thing with black people or white people. When you crack the right joke, it makes everybody laugh, or the majority of people laugh. Look at movies like White Chicks. You know who loves “White Chicks?” White chicks. Why? Because when we do a joke, we make sure the people that we’re sending up laugh the loudest. We did “Men on Films.” Gays love “Men on Films.” When you do the joke the right way, the people that you’re sending up are laughing the loudest.
CS: You’re doing a comedy tour right now. Is there a movement toward this more permissive ‘just a joke’ culture?
Wayans: Absolutely, and comedians have been steady in this movement. We’re on the front lines. So yes, we’re going to catch bullets and people are going to be offended. But sometimes you have to break down walls. You have to kick them down. Hopefully, this Scary Movie brings back some comedy.
CS: You did a movie last year, Him, in which you played a pro football player. The role was intensely physical. How did you train?
Wayans: It went beyond the physical, the two cardio-a-day workouts. It was meditation, it was reading about closers, cleaners, and coolers [from the book Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable]. I had to eat four times a day, I did cold plunges, massages, and got a lot of sleep. I still do a lot of workouts, I do infrared saunas. I walk three miles to the gym, I intermittent fast, and I work out in this suit that pulsates while I am exercising.
CS: You’ve said one of your favorite books is Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. What other books have inspired you, or lent you something, or given you something to carry around?
Wayans: First and foremost, the Bible. Reading that right now, James Earl Jones is in my ear, reading it to me every day, and I really feel my father’s spirit and my mother’s spirit in me as I go on this journey of spiritual awakening. I’ve read Conversations with God, that helped me a lot. I’ve read Good to Great, The Tipping Point. I’ve read a lot of Malcolm Gladwell books. One of my favorite books is a short book by [Brazilian author] Paulo Coelho called The Alchemist. That’s one of my favorite books because it reminds me that no matter how, no matter when you get lost on your journey, you’re always a little boy setting out to go see the pyramids. And no matter what you go through in life, whenever you get lost, just keep walking your walk. There is no destination called success. Success is the road that you travel toward the destination. As long as you keep walking toward it, you are successful.
